All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel by Bryn Greenwood

Summary:

A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives.

As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.

By the time Wavy is a teenager, her relationship with Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world of addicts and debauchery. When tragedy rips Wavy's family apart, a well-meaning aunt steps in, and what is beautiful to Wavy looks ugly under the scrutiny of the outside world. A powerful novel you won’t soon forget, Bryn Greenwood's All the Ugly and Wonderful Things challenges all we know and believe about love.

There has been a lot of controversy with this book so I was hesitant to read it. It seemed like the people that read it fell into one of two categories: hated it because it promoted pedophilia or loved it because it is a love story. There didn't seem to be an in between with this book. This is the main reason that I decided not to rate it on here because it is about more than how much I enjoyed the plot. Of course, if you came to this blog from goodreads.com, you know that you have to put a rating. Anyway, mainly I want to focus on why I became the middle ground where this book is concerned.

I am able to see both sides of the issue with this novel. Lee me start with what I believe that the author was trying to say with this novel. I believe (and I could be horribly wrong) that the author was attempting to write a story wherein the main characters found love in the most unlikely of places. While this love may have started out innocently it became significantly more as the novel progressed. The characters were able to heal each other and give each other things that no one else could or was willing to. Each of the characters were flawed due to their upbringing and circumstances. They were each treated like garbage by those around them and developed quirks because of it. They were both misunderstood because it was hard for people to comprehend why they were the way that they were. 

While I was able to empathize with each of the main characters, I was uncomfortable with where the book went with the relationship between Wavy and Kellen. This is where I understand the readers who feel that the book is glorifying pedophilia. There is pedophilia in this book. No if, ans, or buts about it. It doesn't matter that Wavy was ok with the intimacy that happened between her and Kellen. There is a term called grooming which is when an adult befriends and establishes an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions. I cannot tell you how many children will say that when they were intimate with an adult in the same ways that Wavy is with Kellen in the book that it was because "they loved each other". I understand that I may anger some readers by saying these things but I cannot in good conscience say that what happened between Wavy and Kellen at certain points in the book is ok. 

I don't think that I have ever seen a more fitting title to a novel than this one. I can see the beauty of the love that transcends and the ugly in the world that they both come from as well as the intimacy that happens between them. I want to be clear that I am not saying that I hate the novel. I think that it is well written and the characters are fleshed out very well. I also thought that putting the different points of view in the book besides the main characters provided me, as the reader, with interesting information and background that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. My problem with the book lies in what I have already mentioned in the above paragraph. Maybe the author wanted readers to feel uncomfortable. Maybe she was trying to tell readers not to live in the box that society and law have created. I have no idea. What I do know is that is you read this book, it will affect you in some way.